Efectos tamaño y sector sobre la rentabilidad, endeudamiento y coste de la deuda de las empresas familiares riojanas

Ponencia presentada y defendida en las XIV jornadas Hispano Lusas de Gestión Científica celebradas en Azores en febrero de 2004.

Capacidades tecnológicas y certificaciones de calidad: Aplicación empírica a las pymes familiares de La Rioja

Ponencia presentada y defendida en las XIV Jornadas Hispano-Lusas de Gestión Científica celebradas en las Azores en febrero de 2004.

Capacidades directivas y aprendizaje en las pymes exportadoras

[ES] La importancia de las percepciones de la dirección de la empresa ante la exportación puede afectar de manera significativa al comportamiento exportador de las pymes. En concreto, este aspecto puede incidir sobre el hecho de comenzar una política de exportación en la empresa, así como en políticas de consolidación de dichas exportaciones. El trabajo presentado analiza empíricamente estos dos hechos. En primer lugar en qué medida la percepción de la dirección ante la exportación afecta al hecho de comenzar la exportación. En segundo lugar, en caso de ya ser pymes exportadoras, se estudian qué percepciones directivas ayudan a consolidar dicho compromiso exportador. Para ello se desarrollan y validan ciertas escalas que miden la percepción de las ventajas y las barreras a la exportación mediante el empleo de ecuaciones estructurales. Ambos estudios se efectúan teniendo en cuenta la condición de familiar o no de las pymes objeto de estudio, con el fin de efectuar un análisis exploratorio sobre la potencial incidencia de este hecho.

El comportamiento de las empresas familiares y no familiares en los mercados extranjeros: un estudio comparativo

[ES] Debido a que durante las últimas décadas un gran número de empresas e industrias han incrementado su orientación global, el proceso de internacionalización también ha tenido que ser advertido por la empresa familiar como instrumento de expansión y crecimiento. Así, hemos querido prestarle una especial atención a la comparación entre las empresas familiares y no familiares con el fin de examinar aquellas diferencias o similitudes encontradas entre estos dos grupos de firmas atendiendo a su actividad internacional. De esta forma, podremos establecer un marco de referencia para un estudio posterior en mayor profundidad sobre este fenómeno para el caso de las empresas familiares.

Características diferenciadoras de la empresa familiar: aplicación práctica

Este trabajo se centra en profundizar un estudio que ha recibido escasa atención hasta ahora por parte de los investigadores económicos, un estudio sobre las empresas familiares. Son las entidades que predominan en nuestra sociedad, impulsando la economía y el empleo, donde convive el sistema familiar con el sistema empresarial, dando como resultado el florecer de muchas características peculiares. En el trabajo se han analizado estas particularidades, enfatizando conceptos concretos con citas mencionadas anteriormente por otros autores, para luego gracias a una aplicación práctica contrastar lo mencionado en distintos casos reales y extraer conclusiones.

Harreman-estilo berri bat enpresa familiarrekin

[EU]Lan honen helburua, ikuspuntu teoriko eta praktiko batetik ner group erakundea eta enpresa familiarra aztertzea da, erakunde honen enpresa familiarretan eta enpresa familiarrak ner groupen daukan eragina zein den ezagutzeko. Honetarako, harreman estilo berria aztertu ondoren, ner groupeko arduradunari elkarrizketa bat egin eta erakundeko bi enpresa familiar aukeratu ondoren, hauei ere elkarrizketak egin dizkiet biak hurbilagotik ezagutzeko, alderatzeko eta aztertzeko. Honela, enpresa familiarretan harreman estilo berria aplikagarria dela frogatu da baina enpresa familiar bakoitzak dituen baldintzak funtsezkoak izango dira estiloaren ezartzean. Era berean, enpresa familiarrentzat ner group erakundean barneratzea abantaila suposatzen diela aztertu da.

Education and the dynamics of family decisions

This paper investigates the extent to which a biased transmission of educational endowments affects fertility. To this end, we devise a version of Becker’s family decision model that takes preference change into account. Specifically, we model education as an instrument that increases the autonomy (to prefer), and autonomy as an instrument of preference-change for household-structures. The empirical validity of the proposed model is examined for the European setting using the European Community Household Panel. In the context of the model, empirical findings imply the following. On the one hand, both preference for quantity and preference for bequest for each offspring (quality) increases with education, while preference for current consumption decreases. On the other hand, education is found to be negatively correlated with fertility, at a decreasing rate. Therefore, the paper provides a useful additional toolkit for public policy evaluation. It explains how public policies oriented toward the guarantee of personal freedoms, such as the expansion of education and autonomy, are likely to guarantee the same freedoms for subsequent generations.

Antioxidant defense system and family environment in adolescents with family history of psychosis

[EN] Our objective was to determine antioxidant defence activity in healthy controls (HC) and healthy unaffected second-degree relatives of patients with early onset psychosis (HC-FHP),and to assess its relationship with familiar environment measured using the Family Environment Scale (FES). Methods: We included 82 HC and 14 HC-FHP aged between 9 and 17 years. Total antioxidant status,lipid peroxidation, antioxidant enzyme activities and glutathione levels were determined in blood samples. Results:There was a significant decrease in the total antioxidant level in the HC-FHP group compared with the HC group (OR = 2.94; p = 0.009), but no between-group differences in the Global Assessment of Functioning (GAF) scale scores. For the FES, the HC-FHP group had significantly higher scores in the cohesion (p = 0.007) and intellectual-cultural dimensions (p=0.025). After adjusting for these two FES dimensions, total antioxidant status remained significantly different between groups (OR = 10.86, p = 0.009).

A Computational Module Assembled from Different Protease Family Motifs Identifies PI PLC from Bacillus cereus as a Putative Prolyl Peptidase with a Serine Protease Scaffold

Proteolytic enzymes have evolved several mechanisms to cleave peptide bonds. These distinct types have been systematically categorized in the MEROPS database. While a BLAST search on these proteases identifies homologous proteins, sequence alignment methods often fail to identify relationships arising from convergent evolution, exon shuffling, and modular reuse of catalytic units. We have previously established a computational method to detect functions in proteins based on the spatial and electrostatic properties of the catalytic residues (CLASP). CLASP identified a promiscuous serine protease scaffold in alkaline phosphatases (AP) and a scaffold recognizing a beta-lactam (imipenem) in a cold-active Vibrio AP. Subsequently, we defined a methodology to quantify promiscuous activities in a wide range of proteins. Here, we assemble a module which encapsulates the multifarious motifs used by protease families listed in the MEROPS database. Since APs and proteases are an integral component of outer membrane vesicles (OMV), we sought to query other OMV proteins, like phospholipase C (PLC), using this search module. Our analysis indicated that phosphoinositide-specific PLC from Bacillus cereus is a serine protease. This was validated by protease assays, mass spectrometry and by inhibition of the native phospholipase activity of PI-PLC by the well-known serine protease inhibitor AEBSF (IC50 = 0.018 mM). Edman degradation analysis linked the specificity of the protease activity to a proline in the amino terminal, suggesting that the PI-PLC is a prolyl peptidase. Thus, we propose a computational method of extending protein families based on the spatial and electrostatic congruence of active site residues.

Managing and resisting ‘degeneration’ in employee-owned businesses: a comparative study of two large retailers in Spain and the UK

Employee-owned businesses have recently enjoyed a resurgence of interest as possible ‘alternatives’ to the somewhat tarnished image of conventional investor-owned capitalist firms. Within the context of global economic crisis, such alternatives seem newly attractive. This is somewhat ironic because, for more than a century, academic literature on employee-owned businesses has been dominated by the ‘degeneration thesis’. This suggested that these businesses tend towards failure – they either fail commercially, or they relinquish their democratic characters. Bucking this trend and offering a beacon - especially in the UK - has been the commercially successful, co-owned enterprise of the John Lewis Partnership (JLP) whose virtues have seemingly been rewarded with favourable and sustainable outcomes. This paper makes comparisons between JLP and its Spanish equivalent Eroski – the supermarket group which is part of the Mondragon cooperatives. The contribution of this paper is to examine in a comparative way how the managers in JLP and Eroski have constructed and accomplished their alternative scenarios. Using longitudinal data and detailed interviews with senior managers in both enterprises it explores the ways in which two large, employee-owned, enterprises reconcile apparently conflicting principles and objectives. The paper thus puts some new flesh on the ‘regeneration thesis’.